News coming in suggests Rio was a junket to nowhere. I’m still waiting for Monckton to go through the fine print. Is there a sting?
Still it’s not hard to feel happy. đ
The Telegraph says: “Washout”
It was so bad, even the cheer squad were shocked:
The organisers behind the 1992 Earth Summit, which this weekâs meeting commemorated, were shocked and took the extraordinary step of denouncing the agreement in front of key UN officials at a private dinner of the conferenceâs great and good. Maurice Strong, who ran the previous summit, called it a âweakâ collection of âpious generalitiesâ, while former Norwegian premier Gro Harlem Brundtland â whose report gave rise to the 1992 meeting â said governments had âforgotten about the environmentâ. And Nick Clegg, who led the British delegation, revealed that the Government felt the result fell so far below expectations that it had considered âpulling the plugâ on the whole thing.
 It was so bad, the crowd even hints at the End of the UN. (Crack that champers!).
…as one top international official privately put it to me: âThe UN could not survive many more meetings like this.â And there are increasing signs that businesses and some governments are getting fed up.
Oxfam are calling it a hoax summit. “They came, they talked, but they failed to act,” said Barbara Stocking, the chief executive of Oxfam. ”
Washington post: Rio + 20 “may produce one lasting legacy: Convincing people itâs not worth holding global summits…”
Looks like it might be party time for the worlds free citizens — no damage achieved by the UN (apart from the scandalous waste of money and resources used to clock up nothing but a neat networking op for political powerbrokers).
Yes – they did get the free lunch, but not the free global bureaucracy.
Climate Depot – Marc Morano, Craig Rucker and Christopher Monckton were there on the ground.
Morano delivered the press conference that told the UN that failure at Rio means success for the world:
Failure here is good for the world’s poor people. Failure is the only option for this conference if you care about the environment and poor people. Carbon based energy has been one of the greatest liberators of mankind in the history of our planet.
Global Warming is past it’s use-by — even the UN knows it:
We are witnessing an historic moment in history of UN. UN IPCC chair Pachauri is now saying global warming is but a secondary problem to sustainability. The UN is now saying saving species is a greater urgency than global warming. They have now thrown global warming under the bus in favor of species extinction.
CFACT speakers at UN press conference:
CFACT Executive Director Craig Rucker: “While we stand here, 1.4 billion people are suffering in poverty…Any hope they have of rising out of poverty is being threatened by the negotiations here at Rio+20. […] There is no imminent eco-disaster. We must not sell the potential prosperity of the poor for the dirty rags of sustainable development. Human beings must come first. In fact, history has shown that the environment is best protected when humans prosper. It is no coincidence that the regions of the world with the best air and the purest water are the also the ones that have the most advanced economies and used conventional development to get there. On the other hand, the poor cannot afford to care for the environment when every day is a matter of survival. Nature suffers when people suffer.”
CFACT President David Rothbard: “People are not pollution. People are not a disease. People are the greatest natural resource on the Earth…The way to help the environment, is to lift people up out of poverty. Unleash their abilities through political and economic freedom. Not a top down approach, not one environmental crises after another designed to have people give over more of their political rights, more of their economic freedom to unelected bureaucrats or government regulators. But allowing people to flourish so that people and nature can flourish together.”
Lord Christopher Monckton: “And now having failed with global warming. Because it is not happening as they said it would. There is no reason to suppose it will happen as they say it would. They have now come up with sustainable development. This means pretty much whatever you want to mean. You can say it is about gender equality and women’s empowerment â mentioned at least 5 times in pre-session draft negotiating text. It’s about all kinds of fashionable left-wing Marxist and other socialist causes. It is not in fact about the environment and it is not about development.”
I still want to hear Monckton’s version of the fine print in that non-event. Call me a cynic…
The news out of Rio is good; but I’ll be truly happy only when the money spigot feeding the CAGW effort becomes a drip instead of a fire hose.
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The problem is that the Fabian Socialists and their fellow travellers have no intention of giving up on their plan to control the people of the world, a world government, UN Agenda 21 and much more, as one avenue is exposed as a fraud they immediately change to a different avenue, global warming to climate change and now sustainability. The sane people of the world should demand that the UN stick to its original charter and refuse to fund anything more than that.
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Dennis
The Fabians logo is a wolf in sheeps clothing.
In ancient Rome there was “The Capitoline Wolf:the totem animal of Rome”
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/home.html?tw_p=twt
It is possible that there is an association.
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Interesting thought Kevin, thank you.
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Yes , until Monckton has cast his eye over the turgid prose, we don’t know what hidden horrors it may be obscuring.
I thought I heard something about some funding having been secured. From the UN’s point of view that’s all that really mattered, and if they’ve secured that, despite what they may say, they’ll still be as content as a pig in the dirty stuff.
So it’s over to Lord Monckton please, to confirm whether he has indeed finally slain the beast.
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While not forgetting that the credit is due to Willie Soon , for recognising & uncovering that original pre-Copenhagen text, that was being so obscurely hidden in plain sight, in time to stop it from doing any damage.
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Yep, as I reported a couple of days ago, “The major point of Rio+20, as far as I can determine, is to guarantee continuation of the flow of funding.”
Let us not lose site of the fact that the Kyoto Protocol is the only legally binding agreement on the member states, and it expires this year.
I’m jus’ a sittin’ here a’wonderin’ if them thar folks ain’t just bin tryin’ to git themselve’ a new one.
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Bloomberg are reporting (HT Climate Depot):-
I suspect though that a) a good portion of those pledges wont be honoured, b) the bulk of the pledges were in the pipeline anyway Rio +20 or not, c) most of the govt pledges would have been plucked from existing aid budgets, and d) companies implementing continuous improvement programmes can easily tag them as “sustainability”.
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New funding? In part that would be the equal to ten per cent of Australian carbon tax (carbon dioxide) that the socialists in government have promised to give to their UN comrades every year.
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I could say I’m happy about this news. Unfortunately, I’m haunted by a nagging piece of advice I’ve heard before: There is nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal.
Their “cause” has been wounded but these people could still be dangerous. We should watch them very carefully.
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Should they perhaps be tagged & monitored and allowed to live out their lives harmlessly in a commune in the Cotswolds ? Have to be a rather large field for 50,000 or so though.
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And so it is!
And also, so it is that the UN is far from dead. So beware any rejoicing over Rio until all the dust settles and we see what the real fallout is. These people are nothing if not determined and they’re likely to go on in spite of their apparent disaster. They may well end up a whimpering has-been if they keep going as they are. But they’re not there yet.
BB
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Just remember that agenda-21 is being implemented by numerous local governments and at least one US State as we debate Rio. It doesn’t matter that the UN looks like a flop if their grand plan has already been adopted by those in positions of power. And we suffer.
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Best thing to do then would be to have the UN put down humanely.
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Friday was the first time I looked at the term “sustainable development” and actually laughed out loud.
It’s like some Marxist off-site management team-building event listed the most important issue for tree-huggers and the most important issue for the moneychangers, and then decided that just by placing the words “sustainable” and “development” next to each other that the two groups would be instantly married in eternal harmony paying for the care of the Ultimate Commons.
Just as with “global warming” the intended meaning of the phrase is not what the words literally mean – a standard propaganda tactic.
Any development is a project. It is an endeavour to solve a problem. Once the problem is solved, that is the end of that development. Almost by definition, development is unsustainable.
To have sustainable development in general terms you either have to have an endless series of non-trivial problems to solve, or you have to set yourself an unattainable goal backed by boundless funding.
Gee I wonder which of those two possibilities this new meme subsists upon.
People do not need the UN to tell them to do whatever makes sense to do, because if it makes sense they will want to do it anyway.
“Sustainable development” is a deception in language, a self-contradiction in the specific, and it’s a boondoggle in the generalisation.
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Following up on Andrew McRae’s comment:
Some kind of achievement there Andrew …
This is going to take a bit of work, along the lines of “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”.
Understandable response. There are more sensible definitions out there. but with end of financial year looming, I don’t have time to pull up any links. Maybe start with “universal design principles” or variants?
Hardly. Life cycle costing, cost in use, adaptability …
I have to disagree. I have worked on structures that are hundreds of years old. One turned out to have a perfectly sound foundation that was probably laid down in the Bronze Age. A few modifications, upgrading, and it is still in use today. If that is not an example of sustainability, I don’t know what is.
Also trivial problems – items that are cheaper to do, than to work out the cost of …
Yep – that is “sustainable” in the sense of “sustaining the usual suspects in the lifestyle they have become accustomed to”.
No argument there. The problem is that with all the current bs, people switch off, so it is harder to get them to consider what makes sense.
The UN Habitat Program
http://www.unhabitat.org
used to be an excellent resource. Some of the good stuff is actually still there, but you have to go back to the 1980s.
I found a reference to a project I worked on – wow …
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Martin,
I think you misunderstood what Andrew was saying.
Development by definition, is the change from one state into a more desirable state. Both states need to be be defined, ahead of time, to determine if the development was successful or not.
In your example, regarding hundred year old structures, I suggest that there has been a series of discrete developments during the history of the structure, with each being individually identified, funded, and staffed. Some developments may have been done in parallel, and there may have been long periods where no development was done at all.
Yes, the structure has sustained all that nature and civilisation could throw at it, and it has survived. So in that sense the structure has been sustained, but not by a single development, but by multiple developments, each of which had a defined start, and a defined end, and were therefore not sustainable in their own right.
That was the point that Andrew was making. The term “Sustainable Development” is meant to imply constant change for the good, but unless you have an end state defined, and a fixed plan to achieve that end state, you just end up with random activity, and no guarantee of development at all.
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From Rereke:
Possibly.
That is one definition, but not the only one.
As I’ve commented before, those of us working on measures to make things that are more adaptable and enduring now need to find another term to describe what we are on about:
Retention of embodied energy
Adaptability to alternative uses
Design of space so that it can accommodate change eg disability access (corridor widths etc)
Ability to extend, subdivide etc.
Ability to accommodate new technology (eg ducting)
Durability (with reasonable incremental maintenance)
Cost-effective energy efficiency
….
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Martin,
The term Sustainable Development is a propaganda construct that is deployed for its “feel-good” factor to the uninitiated.
But when you look at the individual words, sustainability (as an adjective) means to be held in stasis, whereas development (as a noun) means a controlled change.
This makes the phrase Sustainable Development an oxymoron. It is the equivalent of saying, “It remained motionless, very quickly”.
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Sounds like good building design to me. Keep up the good work. Just stop kidding yourself that you’re on the “sustainable development” team. I mean seriously, you think when the UN and the heads of governments talk about “sustainable development” they are just talking about access ramps for wheelchairs??? These people want to mastermind and regulate every aspect of your life. Agenda 21. They are using people like you to try to give themselves a good name. Please, don’t play their game. Just keep designing liveable spaces for customers, the rest will sort itself out.
As for a more appropriate name, well… surely just plain “sustainability” says it all. Maybe “robust design”?? hey wait…
“Civil Sustainment.” It implies the cultural and technical change that occurs in civilisation over time, as well as needing to be sustained against environmental change and raw material depletion.
When one asks “Is process X sustainable?”, the first reply should be “Is process X good enough that I would want to sustain it?”
I’ve got nothing against sustainability in principle. But I have a sneaky suspicion that when most people (throughout the world) are faced with the choice of living a sustainable life or a desirable life, they’ll pick the convenient, high quality, desirable life every time.
Basically, everybody dies. At the moment we can live like a pauper as part of a sustainable process, or we can live like a king as part of an unsustainable throwaway society. We’re going to die one day either way, so most people choose opulence. They want to enjoy life before they die. That’s if they even have a choice at all.
The challenge is to set up a civilisation where all future mortals can live like kings, and it is possible, but we are not there yet.
When one asks “Is process X sustainable?” the second reply should be “How long have you got?”
Ultimately the Sun will boil away the Earth’s oceans within 800 million years, so even humanity itself has a limited lifetime. If 1000 years is our sustainment goal then the way this civilisation is running at the moment is stupidly unsustainable. That is a result of people wanting the best and doing whatever is easiest. In other words, enjoying life, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Here is the fundamental conflict in sustainability. Because enjoyment is #1, true sustainability is okay only if it doesn’t detract from affluence. The “Sustainability” we are being offered is a restriction and detraction from current affluence. This brand of “Sustainability” is something – we are told – that future generations want us to start doing for their benefit. It is a ghost story. This story faces two insurmountable barriers: the human condition, and resource abundance.
The myth of resource scarcity is that future generations will face an economic crisis due to running out of materials because we have “squandered the natural resources”. As Chiefio is fond of pointing out, no crisis is necessarily created by a total depletion of economically-extractable raw materials because we can recycle everything within our economy. This requires large amounts of power and as long as we have Thorium and solar power we have plenty of energy for another 1000 years easy. (The next ice age might be a bit tricky, depending on whether cloud cover increases or decreases in an ice age.)
The human condition is the choice a social animal faces in doing what is best for themselves versus doing what is best for the tribe. When the “tribe” making the demands doesn’t exist today, it is no contest. When the communist offer is worse, it’s obvious to decline.
So what people do is look after themselves, or in your words, âsustaining the usual suspects in the lifestyle they have become accustomed toâ.
WHAT DO WE WANT?
SUSTAINABILITY!
WHEN DO WE WANT IT?
INEVITABLY!
In some sense it is a moot point because growth and wastefulness will inevitably stop one day on this finite planet and then sustainability and collapse will be the only options. I recognise we do have the opportunity to begin that transition pre-emptively, well before it is necessary, before a lot of people have to die by economic collapse and resource wars, when the transition can be done smoothly. When enough people realise that is what is going to happen based on business-as-usual I think they will be more than happy to “close the loop” on their lifestyle and change the future.
Complete product lifecycle management of materials would be a good start. Supply chain transparency will also be necessary if free markets are to have any say in the solution. There will be no waiting lists or food queues as long as every product and resource exists in greater quantity than is allocated at any one time, all recycled within the human economy. The present civilisation does not work this way yet, that is why it is unsustainable.
The Sustainable Land of Kings (and Queens) will emerge when the economics and technology permit a sustainable option that is a nett step forward. At that point it will be adopted everywhere, you will not be able to stop people from transitioning into it. The genuine sustainability is grassroots. Itwill be achieved by incremental development, not by revolution. Therefore any “Sustainable Development” you see advertised today by the UN is bogus.
The techno-industrial wonderland known as “western civilisation” has been around me my whole life. It’s hardly my fault I was born a few years after the high point in world energy consumption per capita. There are so many resource and technical solutions now to soften the impact of all this growth that I do not think the inevitable arrest is so urgent that people must be made to give up their luxuries now, either by literal force or onerous taxation. I think transition to sustainability is a fine goal to set, but it’s wrong to force people into it.
That is why I said, if an idea is a good one people will want to do it anyway.
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I’d like to add something to the perfectly reasoned response from Andrew above.
What I fail to see completely and utterly is how, when we make things easy, that of itself is something that has to ‘brought down’.
We have two methods of generating electrical power, large amounts of it, in fact huge amounts of it.
This is with coal fired power, and nuclear power.
They are far and away the cheapest method to produce power.
Why?
Because you can have (typically) two to four huge generators for the one coal fired plant, and two monumentally huge generators at a two reactor Nuke.
They make astronomical amounts of power by comparison with anything renewable.
They can do it 24/7/365, unlike any renewable. (of current flavour)
They can do that for 50 years Plus.
THAT is what makes them so cheap in the long term. Huge amounts of power over a very long period, hence the return can be spread over that life span, making the power cheap.
True, new technologies in both methods have seen increases in the cost at the front end of construction, but they still generate monumental power spread over a long time.
This of itself is how to bring the Third (Developing) World out of poverty to a level approaching what we already have.
So, what do they do?
Seek to bring them down.
Make them so damned expensive that the renewables ‘seem’ attractive, and even when adding on all those new requirements these two methods are STILL the cheapest.
So, what they do now is to ‘strap on’ completely unattainable, totally unobtainable, restrictions, like CCS for coal fired power. What this effectively means is that they CANNOT be even contemplated for construction because CCS can NEVER be achieved on the scale required, so no one even contemplates constructing them in the first place, well, excepting China and India that is, where they are powering ahead with new ones at the rate of one a week.
So, we here in Australia are stuck with old tech plants that are aging, getting close to their use by dates, and nothing to replace them with.
Here we actually have something that IS sustainable, and they are not allowed to go ahead and build them.
It’s absolute sheer and utter madness.
Sometimes I despair that we will ever get through to these people.
All they do is ‘invent’ reasons to now go down that path.
We are approaching some pretty serious times if this madness continues.
It’s almost too damned late now, and if you sense the desperation in my tone, you’re right.
In one manner, I actually can’t wait for the first time that one of those large scale coal fired plants closes down because of this madness, because that’s the only way to make people actually see reason.
The trouble with that is that we all lose, and by then, it WILL be too damned late.
Tony.
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Tony at #4.1.1.1.3 above.
It is maddening isn’t it? I probably seem like I am tip-toeing along some gray line here between black and white.
I guess the ideology of the hardcore green is that pollution and habitat destruction is a consequence of an unsustainable civilisation. Because they are ideological they do not make concessions to pragmatism, therefore anything unsustainable or “polluting” must be stopped immediately – at all costs.
While I think I understand the unsustainability of the situation, the lazy part of me sees no problem in having the party go on for as long as it can. If we can do things the easy way for a bit longer, why rush the transition? Plus we have even more time to do R&D on “clean tech” (shudder!) so it reaches a cost-effective point, thus the nett step forward I alluded to earlier. So there is the concession to pragmatism. Oh, plus I’m not the grand architect of the world. heh.
I still have some concern that replacements for lost crude oil production will not be ready soon enough, and that a Peak-Oil driven collapse is going to happen when the peak oil theorists predict (latest ~ 2019AD). But of course these predictions keep moving out so it is difficult to see what new information and reason they have now that makes the new predictions more believable than the failed ones. I think it is worth remembering that even if in theory there are enough resources and technology to keep the whole shebang running, this does not guarantee that logistically plans have been executed soon enough to avoid… a gap. It is quite literally like running out of fuel halfway between petrol stations, even when there is no shortage of petrol at either station. This is why I am still cautious about taking all of Chiefio’s overbrimming enthusiasm at face value. Ungrounded optimism can be as dangerous as self-defeating pessimism.
As for the unattainable restrictions on new power plants, hey, you don’t have to tell me the lefties are big fans of strap-ons….
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Nicely put Andrew – have a mythical thumbs up
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Yes Rere, a thumbs up for Andrew from Marcel Marceau.
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And have a second mythical thumbs up for your comment of June 25, 2012 at 12:25 am.
(sigh) I do wish lucidity was contagious …
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Contagious?
You can’t catch a sweat … đ
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Now comes the hard bit, getting the invisible policies reversed, that are killing the 80% of humanity classified as the poor around the world.
Pointman
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Good Point! Man, but here is where it gets tricky Pointman.
I am not in the 80% classified as poor in the world!
However I am poor due to:
– The higher costs of living supporting a wife, 3 kids, a cat, 2 fish, a garden, a mortgage and a car due to Green Ideology!
– The higher costs of Petrol due to Green Ideology.
– The higher costs of Electricity due to Green Ideology.
– The higher costs of a Federal Oz ALP Commie Government and their stupid Green Ideology.
– The higher costs of water due to Flim Flannerys DESAL Plants and his stupid insane Green Ideology.
– The higher costs of BEER due to higher electricity due to insane Green Ideology.
Black Adder by name, now Black Adder by Heart.
While I laugh, I cry!
How can we end this madness, so I can be a normal Aussie human being, and have a happy and fulfilling life without this green crap constantly in our ears…..
…thats the hard bit!
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M’Lud Edmund, you are indeed a man of constant sorrow. A bit of bluegrass to keep you going until you vote their ass out of power next year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08e9k-c91E8&feature=related
Pointman
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Oh, the trials and tribulations of Homer in disguise, what a blast.
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Rio âmay produce one lasting legacy: Convincing people it’s not worth holding global summitsâŚâ
People maybe, but CAGW cult members definitely not. Also, all the pointless bureaucrats in the Global Warming Industry have a desperate need to feel needed/wanted/important and these global summits are just the job to provide for this need.
Gradually, important politicians will increasingly ignore these expensive jamboreees, but that doesn’t solve the problem of getting rid of the poisonous BS peddled by the Global Warming Industry.
Dismantling the Global Warming Industry would free up many tens of billions of dollars annually to tackle the world’s real problems. This should be the goal of all sceptics.
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“The Green Gods: New Religion and Eco Faith”
Will this Green religion improve the environment or will it ensconce a psycopathic elite in positions of power having control ovr the minds, pockets and lives of their adherents?
http://www.blacklistednews.com/The_Green_Gods%3A_New_Religion_and_Eco-Faith/20159/0/38/38/Y/M.html
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The Pope turns Green:-
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http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/vatican-calls-for-a-global-political-authority/
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For those interested in numbers and their significance:-
The Popes Palace and residence is built upon the Vatican Hill.
Vatican Hill in Jewish Gematria Equals: 911
Vatican Hill in English Gematria Equals: 666
Vatican Hill in Simple Gematria Equals: 111
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Yet another reason I’m a Swedenborgian, now.
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As a mwmber of the Catholic Faith I am utterly SICKENED & DISGUSTED by this !
Mankind will never ever control the climate /weather of Earth.
How utterly arrogant and Anti Christian of the Vatican.
Still I take solace in the fact that these are only human beings with human failings and weaknesses.
Their support of this global warming FRAUD would no doubt sicken Christ.
I will pray for them….
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The Pope is from Germany is he not, one of the Green lands. The silliest part of this is, as I understand it, that acid rain in the northern hemisphere from pollution and related concerns resulted in Environmental Pollution Acts and similar laws to deal with sources of pollution such as the very dirty coal fired power stations that existed 30-40 years ago which have since been replaced. In the 1970s Canadian Dr David Suzuki was one of many who forecast an end to human life as we knew it by 2000 and in the early 1990s he expressed his delight in the results of the attack on polluters and the resulting much cleaner developed world. The Greens moved on from there to global warming and climate change alarmist warnings.
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Carbon dioxide and water have an affinity.
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Like Rio+20, notice that you can’t comment to this post regarding Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last Friday. It’s rare that this occurs on The Hill blogs.
Remarks at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development Plenary
Remarks
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
June 22, 2012
We’re still basically screwed by these eco-lunatics and the UN.
Monckton was right, they are sneaking provisions into Treaties to gradually undermine all individual rights. We caught Senator Kerry trying to sneak a Cap-and-Trade provision into the LOST Treaty last week.
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Please disregard the first sentence, it was referring to the following post but I decided to link to the source document.
Clinton announces $20 million clean energy program for Africa
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John,
I used to think we might have been better off if we’d elected Hillary. But she’s as big a flake as her boss.
Then there’s our beloved California making federal energy lack of policy look almost sane.
It all sounds so damned good when they talk about it. But then you take a second look and the hair stands up on the back of your neck.
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I have to agree with you but the Sustainability mess started under former President Clinton.
Bloomberg – Jun 23, 2012
UN Reaps Sustainability Pledges Worth $513 Billion In Rio
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Yet another oxymoron.
The only growth rate that is sustainable indefinitely is 0% growth.
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When former Australian prime Minister Gough Whitlam let it be known that he liked to be named “Fabius Maximus”, I thought that the then USA First Lady might like to be named “Hillarious Clintonis”.
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http://mercybelle.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/happy-hilaria-greco-roman-festival/
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This is perhaps slightly off topic but is a point on the trend graph. Below is an excerpt from a professional software company.
It’s the last sentence that is significant. I put the lot in to show its casual throw-away nature.
“We recommend that you upgrade to Presentation Wizard 4. Due to its increasing inability to get along with all the current releases of Windows, we are no longer able to provide replacement legacy installers for Presentation Wizard 2 to registered users. Not to put too fine a point on it, Windows has devised more ways to crash it than proponents of global warming have math errors.”
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Ouch!
But very true.
(Typed on my Mac)
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Jo,
I think you will find these “treaty” junkets have been sidelined by the UN and that the UN will be implementing their agenda elsewhere under other “flags of convenience”. This means looking what other organisations are concluding and or proposing. It seems clear to me that they have most of the bureaucratic superstructure in place with some fine tuning in place.
What has not been considered is the slowly dawning realisation that as a result of the socialist method of running an economy, printing money when it becomes moribund in order to stimulate it, that the EU nations are basically bankrupt, as are the EU banks and the US. They are starting to realise that the printing of money to kick start economies doesn’t work.
In addition to being bankrupt, the EU also suddenly realised they have no capital to implement their energy replacement schemes. The bureaucratic system that is the EU is terminally moribund – as was the USSR during 1989. No one in the EU is creating wealth anymore, despite the natural predisposition of the Germans to do so by their prudence, hard work and ethics.
WWI and WWII were basically the Anglo-Saxon policies at stopping Germany from becoming an economic power house, principally instigated by England during the height of her imperium. The English preferred not to compete with Germany by being more productive and instead opted to destroy Germany economically to remove the threat of them taking over the British Empire by sheer productivity.
The whole EU mess can be traced back to the manipulations of Karl Marx and his followers, and those who can’t be named.
The problem with the socialists is that they don’t seem to understand that their utopia is unachievable in the here and now, and the implosion that is the EU today is the physical result of their beliefs and economic policies.
Personally I suspect the UN, and its EU mates, are slowly realising this but in true lefty tradition, can’t admit or accept it.
So there may not be a sting to be uncovered, rather it is more likely that they have run out of money to implement their policies. The global economy is far larger than any nation state or the UN to control.
After all, it’s the socialists who believe that if you reduce interest rates to zero, that you then have infinite capital at your disposal.
But don’t get me wrong either, this lot have not given up – so I would look for their sting(s) elsewhere – probably in little publicised technical gatherings of “scientists” etc – since what we are possibly seeing is a rejuvenation of the Technocracy movement of the 1930’s.
But the gist of this post is that a) they have realised they have run out of money, and b) they have not admitted defeat, so they will become even more dangerous as time passes.
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Louis I’m a fan but your last line should read … a)they have realised they have run out of other people’s money
but I agree with the balance of your comment
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Val,
In a sense you are right, but the way their system is constructed, it is rather difficult for their citizens to start producing new money from economic activity. They seem to believe that citizens, after being raped and pillaged in an economic sense, will continue to produce as if the assault never happened. Wrong. If being productive results in future acts of rape and pillaging, then a wise person would reduce production in order to minimize future raping and pillaging.
So in this sense they have also run out of money, since their societies are not producing.
What does intrigue me is how they intend to print money without causing another Weimar experience – that frightens the Germans more than anything else.
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thanks Louis, I’m still trying to comprehend Says law
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Val,
I think I’ll explain it via a Henry Thornton article, and that might take a bit of time as PJ is on holidays in Italy so posting might be delayed. Or I could post it up at LHCW but right now I need to focus on work – I have to supply the drilling company with a scope of works asap.
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Val is right – it is always other people’s money.
One further correction. Britain jumped into war with Germany in 1914, not for economic reasons within Europe, but because Germany was in the process of building up a deep-water navy that could rival the Royal Navy. Britain was dependent on sea power to protect its trading interests around the world, and did not want their German cousins grabbing a market share.
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Exactly – instead of competing for market share, they opted for the other solution, and we’re still paying for it.
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and for those of you intrigued by Say’s Law check out allaxyfiles.com/2012/06/22/says-law-and-consumer-demand/
check out the post – think about ‘demand is constituted by value adding supply’ and think about where are we at with RET and all those beautiful Govt subsidies, that gets supply so far as Govt subsidy goes but where’s the value adding
I may not have Say’s law right but Louis will no doubt correct me
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sorry got that link wrong
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2012/06/22/says-law-and-consumer-demand/
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Of course it’s not as if just looking at recent history, say 100 years or so, wouldn’t tell you what the truth is â so it all has to be repeated endlessly in a futile attempt to drive a square peg into a round hole.
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Right now the members of the European Economic Union or EU are biting their fingernails as they watch the financial implosion under way that could end the socialist dream of a new world order and cause a new depression in the EU. They would have little or no money supply then.
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Hi Louis just above here somewhere, using – “and those who canât be named”.
It’s a lovely night for literary play so I thought I’d chip in with Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945), a poet and intimate to Oscar Wilde
“I am the love that dare not speak its name.” (“Two Loves”, 1896).
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Geoff,
Ah yes, excellent word play but not what I had in mind – I’m sort of in a Andrew Bolt situation where I can’t publicly state what I mean without getting foul of the object of my obfuscation, and that is bloody annoying. Mind you it’s not in anyway like present day Germany when history revisionists get put in gaol for merely questioning history. But I must stop here as Jo hardly needs that can of worms being opened here.
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http://www.ihr.org/
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Thanks Kevin
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Christopher Monckton reports the following from Rio.
Our Politicians who attended the Rio +20 (Julia Gilliard) summit should immediately without edition release the details of this text to the House of Representatives because it is our right to have debate about its contents. If the UN wants to take away our rights then this Labor government is dead and will be annihilated at the next election.
They can not and will not be allowed to take away our rights!!
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Louis is so right. The UN basically controls what is going on in higher ed now all over the West through the Bologna process initiatives. One of the goals is that there be no differences in outcomes among different groups. Literally must rig it so having college educated parents gives no benefit over having parents who are migrant workers. In reality it means there is no knowledge or abstractions. Just basic skills and attitudes.
UNESCO and UNEP and DIVERSITAS and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and the Beverly Forum that Australia is a part of but the US and UK manage–these are just a few of the initiatives going operational in 2013 under their chosen name of Future Earth Initiative.
Perhaps some bureaucrats read too many comic books while jetting around the globe on junkets.
They don’t think they need treaties and treaties draw publicity that impedes the collectivist march.
And then as Ban-Ki Moon has said education is their primary weapon. I mean emphasis.
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Robin,
Weapon was right…we’re in a war with these madmen.
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UN Reaps Sustainability Pledges Worth $513 Billion in Rio – WTF !!!!!!!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-22/un-gets-sustainability-pledges-worth-513-billion-in-rio.html
THIS GREEN COMMUNISM MUST BE STOPPED !
THE ANTI HUMAN UNITED NATIONS MUST BE DISBANDED !!
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This is worth sharing !
Agenda 21: Kansas Lawmakers Endorse Measure Opposing U.N. Sustainability Plan
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002715295
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Angry copy of an e mail I received today:
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By all accounts it looks like AGW is really dead. It may affect both skeptic and pro warming sites as interest wanes or is diluted
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Mick,
AGW was never alive. It never existed. It was only ever a figment of the bureaucratic mind. It was lies and fraud from the beginning. It was a smokescreen.
This site, and many others, are now looking behind the myth of AGW, at the supra-national political and societal manipulation that the AGW scare was hiding.
And what we see, is not pretty. Abuse and misuse of power rarely is.
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o/t but sometimes just philosophy is needed
(thanks to sdog from Catallaxy) have a look at Henri
http://www.anthropocon.com/2012/06/22/henri-the-brooding-french-existentialist-cat-returns/
and hereâs the two previous Henris
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M7ibPk37_U (no 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q34z5dCmC4M (no 2)
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If Gaia is a temple, these UN sustainability people are the moneychangers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_of_the_Temple
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Rick Bradford
This info re Gaia may be of interest:-
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scam, scam, scam:
24 June: UK Independent: David Connett: Carbon credit scam would have cost Britain ÂŁ2bn
Customs officials had to move fast to close VAT loophole that helped gang profit from climate-change scheme
Baroness Scotland was roused from her sickbed and confirmed that the trade minister, Stephen Timms, had the power to zero-rate VAT. Within 48 hours, investigators had blocked a loophole in a scheme set up with the laudable aim of combating climate change. Shrewd criminals were exploiting that loophole to rob the Exchequer of up to ÂŁ1m a week.
Details of the dramatic move to end carbon credit fraud emerged this weekend after three members of a UK gang aiming to steal “as much money as possible” from the public purse were jailed for up to 35 years. Sandeep Singh Dosanjh, Navdeep Singh Gill and Ranjot Singh Chahal, were found guilty of stealing ÂŁ38m.
Southwark Crown Court in south London heard how the gang set up a chain of bogus companies to trade carbon emission allowances. The convictions, the first in the UK, turn the spotlight on a fraud that has cost European nations an estimated ÂŁ4.2bn in lost tax revenue, according to the law-enforcement agency Europol…
Notwithstanding the losses, Mr Timms’s quick action meant several hundred million pounds were saved. After the trades were zero-rated, carbon trading collapsed by 90 per cent. At their height, 20 millions tons were being traded in one day.
***Investigators were strongly critical of a number of major international banks that had financed the trades. “There was a massive failure on the part of the financial institutions to ‘know your customers’, which allowed this to happen,” one said.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/carbon-credit-scam-would-have-cost-britain-2bn-7878760.html
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Call me cynical, but if the CRU had been behind it, without all these almost exclusively Indian sounding names, would it have been referred to as a scam, or just a perfectly legal scheme which could do with some adjustment ?
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This is very old news.
Note that the article mentions the trial. These sorts of cases take a long time to come to trial in Britain.
The most interesting facts about this article, is that a) it neglects to mention that this scam has occurred multiple times over the last three to four years; b) that in all previous incidents, the press were totally silent; c) when Britain moved to close the legal loophole, it was stymied by the existence of “established EU directives”; and d) that the Independent now feels the time is right to actually publish something about it.
It would appear that a degree of press censorship has been lifted, or is now safe to ignore.
p.s. The scam itself involves the purchase of credits in Euros which does not attract any form of purchase tax, and then transferring them to Britain through a set of related companies, where they can be sold back into the Eurozone for a price that is inflated by the British VAT, which is then pocketed.
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I don’t believe for one minute they’re done. Change the name, call it what you will, just follow the money. That’s what they do.
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Does Heartland matter
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/assessing_the_heartland_institute.html
what’s its past and where is its future?
the last para in the article
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Unfortunately the view from the perspective of history will be too late to save us now. In the meantime Heartland’s ability to be persuasive has been damaged, at least for a while.
Count one for the enemy.
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sorry, don’t know where all that underlining came from
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Some more illuminating articles on this Rio leftist lovin…..
UN Seeks New Powers to Remake World at Rio Sustainability Summit
http://www.prisonplanet.com/un-seeks-new-powers-to-remake-world-at-rio-sustainability-summit.html
UN Report for Rio+20 Outlines Top-down âGreenâ World Order
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/11601-un-report-for-rio20-outlines-top-down-green-world-order
UN Bosses Secretly Plot Global Govt Through âGreen Economyâ for Rio+20
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/10834-un-bosses-secretly-plot-global-govt-through-green-economyq-for-rio20
Ambitious UN Sustainability Conference in Rio to Avoid Climate Talk
http://thenewamerican.com/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/10692-ambitious-un-sustainability-conference-in-rio-to-avoid-climate-talk
Socializing at Rio: Socialists Run the Earth Summit
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/2716-socializing-at-rio-socialists-run-the-earth-summit
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The fail at Rio is perhaps more significant than the fail at Durham. Those using AGW hoax as a stalking horse for their socialist agenda are now finding out what the collapse of the hoax means for their future plans. The world is no longer interested in ego scares that require redistribution of wealth under a framework of UN global governance. This is just the begining of the fallout from the AGW hoax. AGW supporters from scientists, journalists, politicians of the left and the UN are now finding out that they cannot simply slink off to the next hoax. Given that the Internet keeps a permanent easily accessible record of who supported the scam, if the left want to start a new scam they are going to need new people, new NGOs and new politicians. The fallout from the AGW hoax is going to be huge. The Rio fail is a warning to those involved that there is no escape.
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Don’t be so naive. They will just start talking the new scare and ignoring their past.
Look at Paul Ehrlich – wrong time and time again, but still an icon of the greenies- some quotes from Wikipedia.
“In the years since many of Ehrlich’s predictions have proven incorrect, but he stands by his general thesis that the human population is too large and is a direct threat to human survival and the environment of the planet”.
“Ehrlich continues to perform policy research concerning population and resource issues, emphasizing especially endangered species, cultural evolution, environmental ethics, and the preservation of genetic resources.”
“However, he always has been a strong advocate of government intervention”
File under Leopards, Spots etc.
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An article last week indicated Bank Of America (soon to be my ex-bank) announced they were pledging $50 Billion to combat “climate change” to be donated over the next 10 years. I suppose that pledge meshes somehow with the IPCC funding expedition being discussed and cussed.
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…along with a bunch of others.
So there’s still some life in there somewhere. Climate change, as I’ve insisted for some time now, is part of popular culture and if a bank, for instance, can enhance its image in the eyes of its perceived customers then they will. And if it offers political advantage (I believe it does) then all the better. They don’t need to believe it.
Of course they got the money from us.
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Roy,
We have discussed this before … the collective term for Bankers is a “Wunch”. đ
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DeSmog Blog is good for something after all. I downloaded the Final Declaration from Rio+20 (is that an adjustment factor to compensate for the lack of reliability in the original Rio?) from their site last night and have managed to get about halfway through it so far. Calling it turgid prose is being kind to it. As James Delingpole would say, it’s “weapons grade bollocks”.
Lord Monckton said “You can say it is about gender equality and womenâs empowerment â mentioned at least 5 times in pre-session draft negotiating text.” He is wrong – they are mentioned in almost every paragraph of the final document, along with “indigenous”, “sustainable”, “eco”, “green”, “diversity” etc. I could easily write a program to generate random documents like this, just for fun.
The document seems to believe that the developing world can escape poverty, achieve self-sufficiency and equality on the world stage without the use of technology. The worst part, though is the constant repetition of how movement towards “sustainable development” must be planned and coordinated by “authorities” such as the UN, governments and NGOs. The role of the private sector and individuals is limited to joining in “public-private” partnerships, or falling into line and doing what they are told.
In the spirit of “sustainability”, I’m glad the document was available to download from DeSmog in PDF format, because the cutting down of a single tree to print this garbage on paper would be a true environmental crime.
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Is the UN degenerating? I think so, but it will do much harm before the wounded beast gets the sword thrust that ends a bull fight. Is is becoming less and less relevant, evoking this passage from a collection of assorted quotes –
“This item is worthy of a timely reply from an article in the Fall isue of âThe Bent of Tau Beta Piâ â âBenjamin Franklin: Philadelphia, Serendipity, and a Summer Stormâ by Dr. Bryen E. Lorenz. Quoting at length in response to the British Board of Ordinance effort in 1776 to protect its gunpowder from lightning strikes:
The question eventually became whether a pointed or blunt lightning rod end should be used in this application. Franklin, who was appointed a member of the committee, recommended a pointed end which was based on his earlier kite experiment. One dissenter on the committee had opted for a blunt end. Nevetheless, the committeeâs recommendation was for a pointed end. King George III angered by Franklinâs political views, had asked Sir John Pringle, president of the society, to give an opinion in favor of the blunt end. Pringle replied that, âThe laws of Nature were not changeable at royal pleasure.â To this the King indignantly responded, ââŚby the Kingâs authority that a president of the Royal Society entertaining such an opinion ought to resign.â Pringle promptly resigned. The London gossip soon found an apt verse to relish the moment.
While you, great George, for safety hunt,
And sharp conductors change for blunt,
The nationâs out of joint.
Franklin a wiser course pursues,
And all your thunder fearless views,
By keeping to the point.”
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Wow things really have changed since some alarmists were warning that English children would never see snow again…
I do wonder how many times there have been requests for the independant to pull this one?
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Here in Oz we” have a quiet beer and a chuckle over this Rio Fiasco ( a Friasco? ).
Our previous PM went to Copenhagen having pranced into power declaring that CAGW was the “greatest moral challenge of our time!” only to come away having been caught on tape saying that “the Chinese ratf&@*ed us!”. Thankyou China for saving us from our sanctimonious, self indulgent selves. Durban was a predictable flop and this was always going to be the complete fizzer it was. It has proved beyond much doubt that CAGW is not taken seriously at all by any government around the world except to the extent that it might have been a useful in a shakedown of the wealthy nations and that so called renewable energy such as wind, solar etc are a capital gluttonous, inefficient, absurd technologies for all the practical reasons that were pointed out by any one with half a brain or more.
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While we await Monckton’s final analysis, here’s another note of optimism from him.
Lord Monckton Breaks Down Rio+20
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Please be very aware that this thing in Rio was The Earth Summit.
While similar to those other UN conferences, this is not to be confused with the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) which is the main UN entity where Climate Change is concerned.
Their next meeting will be in Qatar in November/December. This will be COP18 and MOP8.
COP is the Conference of Parties, and MOP is the Meeting Of Parties.
MOP is where they try and nut out what will happen with the now patently failed Kyoto Protocol.
As Copenhagen failed so miserably, and then Cancun, and then Durban, don’t hold your breath that anything will come out of Qatar, except the planes taking home the delegates with their press release in hand, loudly proclaiming to the
punters, er,acolyteser, voters that we have‘Peace for our time’, sorry, an action plan for the future.So now, just as Neville Chamberlain added:
Tony.
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Tony
The work has been in progress for years with over time many UN environmental treaties being signed, the most significant as I see it being the Law of the Sea Treaty.
Much conference time from what I read was spent in assessing how governments had progressed in meeting the various treaties obligations. This would explain the new Marine Parks and the desire for Gillard and Burke to be in Rio to get a pat on the back.
Julia’s spots haven’t changed since her university days.
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Just beware of the “
invading Hun“, green evangelical activist in our press, our schools and our minds.00
Hard to believe that on the very day immediately following Chamberlain saying this that Hitler invaded the Sudetenland.
How apt is it today when these people come home with their press releases in hand, saying nothing to fear here, while working behind the scenes to implement by stealth their plans.
Tony.
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The trolls seem to quiet on this thread. What is “spin” about why rio was so such a success?
(was incoherent rambler, thanks pointman. Time for a change of name).
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Lovelock has had it LOL
http://www.beaufortobserver.net/publicationreturnframe.lasso?-token.address=http://www.torontosun.com/2012/06/22/green-drivel
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link doesnt work my apologies do a search for lovelock climate etc will come up
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Link Here…..
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Thanks for the link update, Heywood.
You gotta hand it to the pragmatic Canadians.
Interesting that Lovelock is also quite open about the fact that most climate scientists are government shills. As more of them retire onto secured pensions, can we expect more of the same types of rationalism? I certainly hope so.
It will be interesting to see if: a) there is a major outcry about this (bringing more attention to his statements); or b) the other climate scientists try to ignore it in the hopes that nobody notices.
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Thanks to JoanneNova for an excellent blog. I read regularly after being introduced by WUWT.
Joe V.’s (#29 6/24 11:52 pm) link to Moncton’s video response to Rio (day after end of conference) is an excellent beginning assessment. To the extent I can remember quotes: “It has the stink of death about it.” “They [marxists] lost.” “I think there is a good chance the West will survive.” Paraphrase: Now that they realize that green-environmental issues are no longer “cool” and that the climate has not changed according to their predictions, they are turning to “Poverty”. Good. Now we can be hard-headed. No one solves the problems of poverty like the affluence of Western freedom. Socialism creates poverty. More on real environmental issues as well.
I am expecting a landslide (after a long, hard fight) in November for the free market in the U.S. Even “religious” Democrats (“mistakenly” converted by marxist take-over of the Democrat party) don’t like the stench of poverty and decay. I might be wrong, but I believe that Americans are not stupid. I am looking forward to Australia’s next election, too.
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I still see the term ‘biodiversity’ being touted as important. It is, but it does not have to mean every single specimen of flora & flora has to remain as is and forever and a day.
Too many perceive biodiversity as a delicate house of cards that will collapse if one or two cards are removed. Rather, biodiversity should be sen as a web like a spider’s web. There was a small text book, “The Web Of Life” which pointed this out. i.e. if a spoke in a web is broken it can easily be repaired. This applies even if many spokes are damaged.
Likewise, if a species is removed from its niche then another species of animal or plant will soon take its place.
This has happened since life on Earth began. Too much unecessary energy, time and money is spent on worthless salvation causes of specific species when c.f. the overall big picture of biodiversity.
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I happen to know the authors of the early editions of Web of Life (a year 11-12 text book of the Victorian department of Education, that commissioned University of Melbourne Academics to write), and I’ll say on their behalf (the living ones that is) that their analogy was to paint a portrait of how systems interconnect. They’d point out that you can destroy a web so that it can’t be rebuilt.
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Adding a less narky reply here. Clearly “biodiversity” is a grenade tossed into these debates with little supporting data but plenty of emotive impact. If you want to deflect the grenade or put the pin back in, you need to do so by providing a proper counter argument. Platitudes using stories about webs are pointless in this context.
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Can someone remind me why Julia has implemented a “Carbon Price”?
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Just to add to the above about any mass between you and a radiant energy source will provide cooling – fire walkers before walking over hot coals coated the soles of their feet with ash [carbon].
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As part of the introduction of the “Carbon Price”, Julia plans to repeal the First and Second laws, perhaps?
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(Attention Moderators. The image linked to her has been converted to gif format if you wish to Post it here with the text)
What we need to do, even though we think that this might be the beginnings of the end for this CAGW meme, is not lose sight of what we may be doing.
Keep in mind, as mentioned above, that they are starting on our children, and while the word may be a little strong, what they are effectively doing is brainwashing them, so that by the time they do grow up, they will have that meme as part of their normal thinking.
This image shows something whose thinking is obscene, not the image itself, but what is behind it. It’s from 2010 admitted, but we still need to be bringing things like this to the fore.
Jack and Jill
Tony.
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UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment.
Hope y’all “equipped to deal with carbon” Australia.
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Richard we are very confused, our leaders tell us that they have put a price on carbon and then they tell us that only the big polluters will pay and that will be based on CO2 emissions. lol
And interesting calculation, because they also tell us that the price of carbon will not add much to our cost of living at $23/tonne to the big polluters however an electricity producer pays $23/tonne and adds a profit margin of say 80% so price now $41.40/tonne. The supplier is given a discount but passes on the $41.40 to consumers who pay 10% GST = the price to us $45.54/tonne. In many instances each link in the supply chain will have suppliers passing on tax liability or tax charged by their suppliers and after adding it to their costings they add their margin too. I suspect that the cost of living will over months and years ahead cause a significant cost of living increase and burden to industries that will decide to relocate their businesses overseas to access cheaper electricity and lower operating costs generally. Socialists never consider the consequences, have no business sense, do not understand the difference between revenue and profit or how investment decisions are made.
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So as I understand, the “equipment” to deal with carbon is a chequebook.
But to actually “deal” with carbon there’s a number of alternatives, not the least being that wonderful euphemism “carbon leakage”.
Closing down operations entirely would be another.
However, I suggest that the best way to “deal with carbon” is to expose the truth that carbon is – far from being “the greatest moral issue of our time” – a benign natural element with significant benefits.
There, carbon dealt with.
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I just love it every time someone comes here with a new announcement for a renewable power plant.
Pacific Hydro is sinking its money into this Wind Plant proposal for the North of Brazil.
Why I like it so much is that it gives me a chance to show the wonder of these extraordinary new fangled power generators.
This Wind plant will have a Nameplate Capacity of 140MW which will come from around 45 or 50 Wind Towers.
These will supply what can only be described as a phenomenal amount of power.
I’m just overjoyed that an Australian Company, Pacific Hydro is willing to sink its own money into this plant for far off Brazil.
What this does for Pacific Hydro is give them some (imaginary) credits, umm, not at the same value as our home grown credits, (as laid out in the Australian Legislation) but at least they will be able to offset some of their emissions here in Australia.
Oh, by the way, Bayswater Power Station supplies the same power output that all these towers will provide over a whole year in, er, six days and ten hours.
Oh, what a hoot!
This is just so much fun.
Tony.
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Lord Monckton Breaks Down Rio+20 (Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-NOjX9l4kk
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[…] So it seems that Rio+20 was a spectacular failure http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/rio-secrets-they-were-hiding-their-failure-im-hopeful-marc-morano-c… […]
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